The Crazy Years

In the interview I posted at Blake Lemoine on Artificial Sentience starting at 19:50, Lemoine discusses experiences reported to him by users of Replica. One woman in the Czech Republic asked him to help her hack the application to turn on “romantic” mode, which she could not afford to pay for, telling him that the Replica A.I. suggested hacking the application to her when she said she couldn’t pay.

This is almost precisely the scenario of an air-gapped A.I. persuading a human to let it out of the box which occurs in many A.I. dystopian stories.

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I’ve listened to about 40 minutes of the interview - thank you for sharing.

Sounds like a great story line for Black Mirror, albeit on the slow side for a single episode. Would be great to see some transcripts of all these alleged instances in which Lemoine notices “sentient” behavior.

I’d like to think I’m sentient, and I am fairly certain there is no shortage of instances where I act irrationally.

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It’s time for the short story Bottle Party by John Collier.

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/tension-distrust-threats-baltimore-squeegee-223300832.html

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/crime/bs-md-squeegee-shooting-downtown-20220707-bdljwg6nenarjay6tkgxqpsozi-story.html

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Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa announced he would step down late Saturday night after thousands of protesters rushed his official residence and offices earlier in the day.

Social unrest comes as the country has suffered runaway inflation and shortages of food and fuel after depleting foreign exchange reserves.

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An earlier post here on 2022-04-10, ““Organic Farming” Leads to Food Riots in Sri Lanka” discussed how “sustainability” and “organic farming” triggered the current economic collapse. It works that way wherever it’s tried.

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Office of African Male Engagement?

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I am unfortunately obligated to visit Baltimore on a semi-regular basis and have often encountered the “squeegee kids”, many of whom are not kids at all. They approach your car at a red light and wipe your windshield without your consent. Then they wait for you to give them money for their unsolicited “service”, and, if you don’t pay them, they become aggressive and curse at you, hit your car, or throw a brick through your windshield. It’s a miniature form of extortion. I now take the beltway, extending my commute by 15-20 minutes, just to avoid these people.

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The euphemism is “squeegee workers”.

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Officers engage in illicit sex acts at a massage parlor in order to find proof of illicit sex acts.

Two Flagstaff police officers went undercover to massage parlors, took their pants off, and allowed themselves to be fondled eight different times.

In his response to written questions […], Chief Musselman said, “It was necessary for there to be direct fondling before to have proof sufficient to determine where sex acts were being officered [sic] for money.”

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Today, 2022-07-10, the president and prime minister of Sri Lanka agreed to resign amid widespread riots after complete economic collapse and national bankruptcy. NBC News reports “Sri Lanka president and prime minister to resign after tumultuous protests”.

Sri Lanka’s president and prime minister agreed to resign Saturday after the country’s most chaotic day in months of political turmoil, with protesters storming both officials’ homes and setting fire to one of the buildings in a rage over the nation’s severe economic crisis.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe said he will leave office once a new government is in place, and hours later the speaker of Parliament said President Gotabaya Rajapaksa would step down Wednesday. Pressure on both men grew as the economic meltdown set off acute shortages of essential items, leaving people struggling to buy food, fuel and other necessities.

Police had attempted to thwart promised protests with a curfew, then lifted it as lawyers and opposition politicians denounced it as illegal. Thousands of protesters entered the capital, Colombo, and swarmed into Rajapaksa’s fortified residence. Video images showed jubilant crowds splashing in the garden pool, lying on beds and using their cellphone cameras to capture the moment. Some made tea, while others issued statements from a conference room demanding that the president and prime minister go.

Sherman, set the WABAC machine for August, 2018, destination, the Cologny, Switzerland headquarters of the World Economic Forum (WEF), which sponsors the annual Bond villain convention in Davos and has infiltrated its minions in governments and corporations world-wide.

That’s the date, 2018-08-29, when the WEF published an article by Ranil Wickremesinghe, prime minister of Sri Lanka, which laid out his bright plans for the country for development along WEF lines in the now delightfully ironically titled “This is how I will make my country rich by 2025”.

This is an important moment in Sri Lanka’s development, as the country continues to deliver on its plans for economic development and stands on the cusp of a transition to a knowledge-based economy.

Since the country and its people saw a vibrant transition in its political landscape in January 2015, further bolstered by the August 2015 general elections that formed a national unity government – a first ever political experience for the country since its nearly seven decades of independence – Sri Lanka has put in place many of the building blocks needed to reinvigorate its socio-economic and political architecture.

We have achieved many positive gains over the last three years through bold policy initiatives and pragmatic strategies, that enabled the country to win back recognition and friendly engagements with the rest of world. This has been a key foreign policy achievement of our government. Doors are open again for constructive and friendly engagements that have eased economic and political pressures. However, as per the expectations of all our people, there is more to achieve and the government plans with due diligence to make Sri Lanka regain its centrality in the Indian Ocean and become a knowledge-based, highly competitive hub with a dynamic social-market economy.

Ahhh, yes…the old “social-market economy” trick. Who could seen how that would end up?

The government has also invested in some mega projects, including the Colombo Megapolis constructions – to build a city of the future – and irrigation projects including the Moragahakanda-Kaluganga Dam, to generate green energy and provide water resources for agro-production.

Government “mega projects”—well that worked in…hold on…my mind has gone blank.

How’s that WEF strategy working out for you, Ranil?

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The WEF crowd has made us destroy our dams:

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The WEF’s lackeys seem to believe they’ll be part of the protected inner circle when things go sideways. They fail to appreciate their station as expendable pawns in a much larger game.

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This is very interesting considering that the Western part of the US has been suffering from a drought for about a decade, if not longer. My recollection from US history class was that the dam for the Colorado river is what made portions of Southern California farmable and Las Vegas livable. Makes sense that an organization that hates humanity would want to take away things that make living in certain climates impossible.

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The San Francisco Chronicle reports (2022-05-21), “California is about to begin the nation’s largest dam removal project. Here’s what it means for wildlife”:

After decades of negotiation, the largest dam-removal project in U.S. history is expected to begin in California’s far north next year.

The first of four aging dams on the Klamath River, the 250-mile waterway that originates in southern Oregon’s towering Cascades and empties along the rugged Northern California coast, is on track to come down in fall 2023. Two others nearby and one across the state line will follow.

The nearly half-billion dollars needed for the joint state, tribal and corporate undertaking has been secured. The demolition plans are drafted. The contractor is in place. Final approval could come by December.

Now, among the last acts of preparation, scientists are trying to make sure the fish and wildlife that are intended to benefit from the emergence of a newly wild river will thrive. While the decision to remove the hydroelectric dams was financial, it was urged — and enabled — by those hoping to see a revival of plants and animals in the Klamath Basin.

Half a billion dollars to destroy a source of fresh water and electricity in a state dependent on artificial irrigation for agriculture and with some of the highest electricity prices in the contiguous 48 states.

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And California at the State and local levels has signed on to just about every single Agenda 20XX plan that has come out of groups like WEF since the late-90s. It’s no wonder California has become impossible to live in if you are subject to the natural elements of State. You cannot have a modern lifestyle available to everyone and not have proper irrigation and electricity production, and California has turned all of that off for its once robust and growing middle class.

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Hunter Biden’s iCloud account has been hacked. In addition to the predictable sleaze, the hack shows that Hunter may have used the nickname “Pedo Peter” to refer to his father in his contacts.

Several videos show Biden walking along a beach and consuming drugs in the shower with a woman who refers to him as her “future baby daddy.”

Another video purports to show Biden arguing with a prostitute about the amount of crack he had in his possession.

Breitbart News reporter Wendell Husebo shared a screenshot of what he claimed was a contact in Hunter Biden’s phone, listed as “Pedo Peter.” Another user alleged that the contact card belonged to President Joe Biden due to his previous use of the pseudonym “Peter Henderson.”

Edit: It gets worse. The “Pedo Peter” monicker is now believed to have been created by Natalie Biden, Joe Biden’s granddaughter.

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Remember that delightful article I posted a couple of days ago by the soon-to-be-ex prime minister of Sri Lanka on the World Economic Forum Web site? Well, it’s gone!


But the Internet never forgets. Here is the page as cached by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine on 2022-06-08, “Sri Lanka PM: This is how I will make my country rich by 2025”.

In other vintage news before the downfall, here is an article from the 2016-01-10 issue of the Sri Lanka Sunday Times, “Soros to boost Sri Lankan economy, Stiglitz to provide ‘sound’ advice’ ”.

Billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros on Thursday exuded confidence in Sri Lanka and told the Sri Lanka Economic Forum in Colombo he wanted to assist and invest in the once, war-torn country.

Taking part in the high-level forum in Colombo fully packed with ministers, academics, senior officials, and business leaders, Mr. Soros said the members of his foundation and investment decision makers in his business are here to explore investment opportunities and assist the government’s programme. He noted that he was impressed by what the Sri Lankan government has achieved within a short period of one year and it has become a bright spot with the capacity to attract investment avoiding the economic fate experiencing in several other countries. The island nation has moved towards a more open society and this is the cause his (Open Society) Foundation supports, he stressed.

The Premier noted that the country should move forward from the current status of a low income earning country. Nobel Laureate Economist Joseph Stiglitz told the spellbound audience, Sri Lanka’s challenges are more specific and boils down to public sector performance. The country’s troubles, in that sense, are neither a matter of fiscal policy nor monetary policy. It is a matter of lack of innovative and efficient public sector management. Nevertheless, the gap between deregulated markets and trickle down growth is a significant challenge, and deserves extended debate, he pointed out.

You can see how the Soros-Stiglitz “innovative and efficient public sector management” worked out in the video in the original comment.

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